My latest copy of New York magazine arrived, its cover a color photo of the dust cloud after the fall of the Twin Towers. Inside, it offers an alphabet (!?) of all things 9/11, from three men named Michael Lynch who died that day to a mini-profile of the last person pulled from the Trade Center wreckage.

Stop. Just stop.

I was shocked at my reaction when I tried to read that issue. I fought back tears, then had nightmares after I read some of it. So did the sweetie. We’re both hardened, seasoned mid-career news journalists, accustomed to handling difficult and emotional material.

The National Geographic Channel has scheduled a marathon of related coverage on Sept. 11.

Other outlets also decided to try to get out ahead of the pack. Adam Moss, the editor of New York magazine, decided its issue — an A to Z compendium of Sept. 11-related vignettes — should be published well ahead of the 10th anniversary so it would reach readers before the onslaught of coverage began.

“I’m sure, inevitably, people will feel it’s too much and shut down at some point,” he said. “We just hoped we could get what we feel is a pretty good issue out there before others did.”

I was in Maryland that day and the sweetie was all packed, everything he owned ready to move from Brooklyn into my apartment 30 miles north. Instead, as a photo editor for The New York Times, he was pressed into immediate service on the biggest news story of the century. The paper won the team Pulitzer for their work that day.

But we both tasted far more of 9/11 than we had ever wished. Burned bits of paper floated into his backyard. I interviewed a volunteer who worked at the morgue and cried for 30 minutes after I hung up the phone, my professional composure shattered by the hideous details of what I heard.

For my first book, I interviewed Patty Varone, a true unsung heroine of that day whose name is unknown to almost every American — but whose role in it was essential. I’m the only journalist she ever spoke to.

She was for years his personal bodyguard, and so it was she who interrupted Mayor Giuliani’s hotel breakfast meeting that morning to tell him he had to leave at once. It was she who had to keep him safe — how? — as debris and bodies rained from the skies when they arrived at the attack site in downtown Manhattan.

It takes a lot to rattle an 18-year NYPD veteran. She had a tough time telling me her story. I’m grateful she shared it.

Journalists — print, film and broadcast — saw and heard far more than many civilians did that day. Many things we know and saw were carefully edited out of much of what you, the reading/viewing public, “know” about 9/11. We still carry smells, sights and sounds we wish we could scrub from our memory, but we can’t.

We know people who lost loved ones. We know fellow journalists physically and emotionally scarred by the events of that day.

A female cop helped save his life on 9/11.Image by Getty Images via Daylife

It shouldn’t be surprising that women make great bodyguards –mostly because so many people can’t imagine that’s what they’re there for.

For my book on women and guns, which includes a chapter called In The Line of Fire, I exclusively interviewed Patty Varone, a gorgeous 40-something, and an NYPD veteran who served for nine years, including on 9/11, for former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

She told me she routinely got hit on at events as, doing her job by standing some distance away from the mayor and watching the crowd carefully, guys would see her and assumed the good-looking redhead must be there socially, not professionally.

Yet it was from her mouth to his ear that morning that the World Trade Center had been hit. She’s my hero!

According to a recent story in Marie Claire, more and more women are being tapped as bodyguards worldwide.

“Attackers don’t expect women to be security,” says Laura Weber, 35, head of the female unit at GSE Ltd., a London-based security firm. “People are realizing that women can be more covert and blend in as nannies, personal assistants or secretaries.”

I’m the broad behind Broadside, Caitlin Kelly, a career journalist. photo: Jose R. Lopez You’re one of 16,136 followers, from Thailand to Toronto, Berlin to Melbourne. A National Magazine Award winner, I’m a former reporter and feature writer at The Globe and Mail, Montreal Gazette and New York Daily ... Continue reading →